Beginning snow skiers often have difficulty learning to keep the tips of their skis together. In the best of situations a natural walking stance when superimposed onto a pair of skis would result in skis that are parallel. Unfortunately, it is far more likely that donning a pair of skis will naturally result in outward pointing ski tips, which will have the catastrophic consequence of causing the inexperienced skier to do the splits and fall.
Although teaching styles have varied over time and from one ski slope to another, most skiers will begin by mastering the snowplow, or wedge, before learning to keep their skis parallel. The snowplow maneuver has the tips of the skis pointing inward with the tails further apart than the tips. In this position the skier tends to place more weight on the inner edges of the skis resulting in a controlled descent of the ski slope. The angle of the skis is useful to control the skier's speed, even to a stop. A wider angle with the tails of the skis relatively much further apart than the tips will traverse the slope much more slowly than a narrower angle. The goal of the beginning skier is to graduate to skiing with skis parallel.
Several ski training devices have been patented for maintaining spacing between skis. Zemke's U.S. Design Pat. No. D366,083 shows a pair of loops separated by a spacer. One of these devices will slip over the tips of the skis and another over the tails, apparently to maintain parallelism between skis. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,171,667 Wightman describes a pair of spring-loaded connector rods that that allow restrained motion while generally holding the skis parallel to one another. Another patent by Wightman (U.S. Pat. No. 3,751,056) shows a special connector that may be used with his earlier patented device to allow the connector rods to be removed leaving pairs of receptacles that had been either glued or screwed to the upper surfaces of the skis.
The Ski Trainer of Charneck's U.S. Pat. No. 3,907,320 uses turnbuckle-like connecting rods that have their ends attached to clamps that grip the edges of the skis. With one such device near the tips of the skis and another near the tails, a pair of skis can be adjusted from a wedge to a parallel configuration by adjusting the length of the turnbuckles. Other patented devices add to a pair of skis complexities such as handlebars.
One of the most common and simplest devices that has been used for teaching beginning skiers to keep their ski tips together in order to form a wedge is known as the Edgy Wedgy. This is a plastic molded device not unlike a short piece of rubber hose with a screw clamp on each end. The clamps fasten to the tips of the skis with the body of the device lying between the skis so as to keep the tips of the skis closer together than the tails without allowing the skis to cross. When used to teach a child to ski, such a device is attached to the child's skis and the instructor, or parent, will ski backward in front of the child using a ski pole placed against the hose or ski tips to control the child's motion. The major drawback of this device is that the clamps tend to work loose due to vibration and cold weather. When tightened sufficiently to serve their purpose, the clips may mar or gouge the surfaces of the skis, though this is merely a cosmetic and not a functional issue.
The Tip Lock™ Ski Accessory by Apple Rise Sports includes adhesive strips that are applied to each ski to affix a loop portion of a hook and loop fastener. The mating hook portion of the fastener is sewn onto webbing that wraps around the tip of each ski. Two such straps, one for each ski, are connected by a buckle to keep the ski tips together in a wedge shape. The self-adhesive loop tape that attaches to the skis can be removed without damaging the skis, presumably when the skier graduates beyond the training phase.
Many of these devices involve an excessive number of components, rendering them expensive, cumbersome, unattractive and difficult to operate under winter conditions. Devices appropriate for use in a training situation, whether by the trainee or the trainer, need to be easily manipulated by a user wearing bulky mittens with a minimum of effort. They should be inexpensive, easy to attach to skis, have a minimum number of parts, and be easily carried when not in use. It will be showing that the present invention incorporates all of these characteristics while improving upon the security and stability of some of the better previous designs.